Lined up and nowhere to go

Column/Thomas T. Huang

When you're a reporter, you remember events through people. You can't
recall the specific incidents, but you can remember a phrase, a mannerism.

The first time I met Leon Arries, he ran the MIT gas station during the
oil crunch in the late 1970s. You could see the patches of sweat under his
armpits, the skin through the holes in his t-shirt. He was a man who stood
still in the maelstrom of those hectic days.

"Hell, hell, what do you want, son?"

In the first place, I was never a good reporter. In high school, I was to
write a story on gasohol, but because my editor in chief stuttered, I
conducted an interview with Gaston Otterman Hall, the third floor janitor.
I know a lot about mops now.

So Kaliski with his beard scared me when he told me to write a story on
Boston gas stations. Gas was hot news back then. OPEC was very powerful. No
one could foresee its eventual babbling collapse. Slippery hands reached
for US dollars, and prices for premium and unleaded skyrocketed.

America, you were out of gas.

"Tom, you'll do fine," Kaliski said. "Just ask a lot of questions about
gasoline." I wasn't used to the city life, coming from the farmland. Only
telephone booths looked familiar. They plate their buildings with glass,
they must do the same with their outhouses. The operator told me to
dial again when I tried to flush.

Talk with Kaliski brought me to the MIT gas station. To get there, you
drive down Amherst Alley and turn left on Massachusetts Avenue. You follow
the white dashed lines on the hot tar for one block.

America, you stood in line.

The lines were long. The cars were shopping carts. Backseat children
screamed in syncopation to car horns. I stood behind a Cadillac that was
big enough to accommodate a Weight Watchers' reunion with a three-piece
band for entertainment.

I asked the station attendant a few questions. He replied, "I'm sorry,
son. I can only give you gas, that's what the President says. Can't answer
questions about the Middle East."

Arries emerged from his office, towelling his hands. "Hell, hell, what do
you want, son?"

"I don't know what I want," I said. "What's it like, working in a gas
station?"

"Much like a reporter," he said. "You sit and observe the people going
by. Nowadays, people have just been waiting in line, as if that's what they
wanted to do. What are they interested in?"

Later, when I knew him better, he revealed that he had in fact studied
mechanical engineering at MIT until 1963, when Kennedy got shot.

He said, "I can remember where I was when John got shot. I was making
love with my wife. For some reason or the other, she was watching TV and
saw the whole thing.

"John said we should go to the moon." Then came the assassinations and
wars of the 1960s.

I saw Leon a few times after that. We talked about how Ronald Reagan had
drawn a picture of a great America which was going places, dependent on no
one. "He's drawn a picture on a curtain," Leon said. "If you look through
the curtain, you will find people are still standing in line."

Then, in the beginning of my junior year, he was gone. Nobody knew where
he went.

Sometimes now I think of Leon. When I do, I think of the MX missile and
the starving people in Africa. I think of the average salary of an MIT
graduate and the bums of Central Square.

America, you spent all your money on gas, but you didn't even know where
you wanted to go.